Honour
by Sardonic Kender Smile
Summary: ["If you don't kill me," Ursula told him, "they'll do it when I return a failure. I'd rather die with honour."] The army decides not to grant her wish. Giftfic for Samuraiter.
1. Chapter 1

**_Happy new year to Samuraiter! Sorry this isn't quite finished by the deadline, but I hope it provides a least a little amusement to your day. Here it is: a what-if scenario of Ursula joining the army, with quasi support convos (Nino, Jaffar, Erk, Vaida)._**

* * *

_Intro_

Ursula let a thunderclap fly from her _Bolting_. The light made her blink, and when she opened her eyes she found that in that small sliver of time Jaffar had sprung to the other side of the corridor, and the lightning charred nothing but the stone floor of Bern's castle. He kept moving for her, striding with purpose, both knives sheathed.

"Stand down!" she shouted as she pulled _Excalibur_ from her saddlebag. He strode on. She lanced purple light at him and he rolled under it, back on his feet in an instant as if he'd merely somersaulted on a whim, and kept coming.

"I am one of the Four Fangs! I _order_ you to—"

She thought he was too far away but she underestimated him, and his dive took her off her horse. They both hit the ground hard and pain wrenched through her ankle—her foot had twisted in the stirrup on the way down. In an instant he'd hauled her up and slammed her back against the wall. A knife was out; she saw it flash cold just next to her ear.

"You have failed in your duty," she told him. "Where is your shame?"

No emotion flickered through his eyes, not even for a moment, but he hesitated. She'd never seen that before. _He's changed. Sonia's girl has changed him._

The pause lasted only an instant as a razor edge grazed her throat—

"Wait," a voice commanded, the light tenor of a young man. Jaffar halted but did not move his hand and kept his eyes boring into her face. She looked behind him and saw the accursed, rag-tag army headed their way: the famous savage Lady Lyndis, a wyvern rider with a scarred face, a young mage with hair as purple as her own, and the useless girl: wide-eyed, mouth agape, green hair in a shock of frizz around her face.

The man who spoke stepped forward. The circlet around his brow and the colours he sported, gold on blue, marked him as the Pheraean lord.

"Wait, sir," he said again. "Let her live."

"Damn it, Eliwood!" shouted another, and a burly man pushed his way through the crowd. An Ostian insignia clasped his cloak to his armour. "This is war, now! Did you see what happened tonight? _War!_"

"She's a woman, Hector."

"She knew what she was getting herself into."

"I agree," said Lyndis, sheathing her sword so that she could fold her arms. "We can't keep prisoners; we don't have the strength."

"I don't mean that she should be a prisoner." Eliwood walked closer and Jaffar slipped behind Ursula, keeping the knife at her throat. She contemplated making a run for it, but between her ankle and Jaffar's deadly precision, she knew she had no chance. Instead she spat at the Pheraean's boots.

"I won't join you," she said. "I am of the Black Fang. My master is Sonia. You must kill me."

"Call me old-fashioned, but I find taking the lives of women in cold blood to be distasteful."

"You're old-fashioned," said Lyndis irately from behind him.

"If you don't kill me," Ursula told him, "they'll do it when I return a failure. I'd rather die with honour, at the hands of my enemy."

"Why are we your enemy?" he asked, sounding genuinely confused, even frustrated. "What have we done?"

"Don't play innocent. Sonia has told me everything. You are corrupt; warmongerers on a crusade to expand your own influence. To oppress the poor, and to kill us, who would fight for them."

"Those are terrible things to say about people you don't know."

She almost swung a leg up to kick the sarcastic white teeth out of his mouth, whatever the punishment from the traitor Jaffar would be, but he leaned closer and the sincerity of his voice stopped her: "Come with us. Learn about us. A valkyrie as powerful as you must know how to educate herself, surely? To make her own opinions?"

"I am a soldier of the Black Fang. Their opinions are my opinions."

"Loyalty is valiant," said Eliwood. "Ignorance is not."

She glared at him while she thought. To return in shame and accept her punishment would be the right thing to do, and even what she yearned for. Her failure ached in her bones, turned her ribs inward to prick at her heart and her lungs, reminding her that she did not deserve life. Yet if there was even a chance that she could redeem the Fang, that she could kill even one of their targets while their backs were turned—Jaffar, Nino, the three Lycian lords—she would take it. In the end she would die at their hands as she wished, and if she got away she could make it back to Sonia and accept her death with a measure of dignity.

"I will come," she told him.

"No you won't," said Hector, angrily. "Eliwood, just have her killed. Can't you see she'll just turn on us in the middle of the night?"

"We'll take her spellbooks."

"Magic's not the only way to kill someone!" Hector thumped his axe against the floor for emphasis.

"Ask Nino."

Ursula started so severely to hear the assassin's voice in her ear that she almost cut her own neck on his knife. The lords looked similarly surprised, but they turned to the girl anyway, who immediately blushed violet and began to tear up. _Pathetic._

"It's not up to me," she said, holding out her hands placatingly. " I don't know anything; this night has made that clear to me. I just don't want anyone else to have to die."

"She'll live," Eliwood assured her, and Ursula watched Lyndis's face soften slowly, as if against her own will.

"She'll live," said the Sacaean. "For now. Erk, take the books."

"And burn them," said Hector.

The mage looked aghast. "But Lord Hector, we haven't any others. Once mine are used—"

"We'll buy more."

"But this…it's an _Excalibur_."

"Burn it. And the damned lightning one, too."

And so Ursula had to watch, with Jaffar's arms still around her, while the young mage with hair like hers burned her power away page by page.

* * *

_A_

They had given her a staff and taken her horse, practically demoting her to a cleric. Ursula ground her teeth and welcomed the twilight as it swamped the camp. The sooner it got dark, the easier it would be to choose her target.

She sat by the smouldering fire alone, supper long over, and contemplated who it would be. Lord Hector would be the hardest to kill with her bare hands but had no guard, whereas the pitifully pacifist Lord Eliwood kept a paladin with him at all times, and the Lady Lyndis had _two_ knights that escorted her, buffoons in red and green. Nino would have been easiest, _should_ have been easiest, but Jaffar was with her, and had made it clear. She was issued a tent from the bumbling merchant they had with them, but when Jaffar was offered one he shook his head, assembled Nino's, ushered her in, and shot Ursula a long glance before he followed. She understood the message: for whatever reason, he wasn't leaving her side. Nino would be the most difficult target of all.

She was just deciding to steal spellbooks from the mage Erk when Nino emerged from her tent. One of its flaps pulled back to reveal Jaffar, merely sitting and watching. Keeping an eye on his new charge.

Nino walked right to Ursula and then, timidly, sat beside her.

"I'm sorry to bother you," she said, "but I have to know the truth. About Sonia."

Ursula turned away. "You know the truth."

"She really wanted me killed?"

"You were useless to her."

"What if I had killed Prince Zephiel? Would I have been useful then?"

"She knew you'd never do it. You are too merciful toward those who don't deserve it."

"He was only a child."

Ursula heard her sniff and rolled her eyes. "A mission is a mission. You failed yours."

"She was my mother."

"Then she disowned you. That is all."

The sound of Nino rising made her turn back. She walked back to the tent, weeping softly, and Jaffar closed the flap behind her.

_If I had a useless daughter,_ Ursula was forced to think, _I do not believe that I could kill her._

Still, she trusted that Sonia knew what was best. She rose and went in search of Erk's tent.

xxx

She was not considered one of the Four Fangs for nothing.

She waited until the dead of night before she approached, knelt and pulled back the tent flap inch by inch, so slowly her legs had fallen asleep before she could peek through the gap she had created.

Erk was lying on his bedroll with a tome tucked under his arm. She scowled, for it would be hard to take it without killing him first. She didn't want unnecessary bloodshed, but if he stood in the way of one of her targets, so be it.

She crawled into the tent, paused to listen to his breathing—deep, sound asleep—and reached out a hand for the book. Her fingertips landed upon the edge of the worn leather cover. She watched him take a breath in. A breath out.

Then his eyes snapped open and he grabbed her wrist, sitting up and sliding the book behind him in one motion.

"I am Lord Pent's apprentice, and he has trained me well," he said in a voice that must have only dropped recently, for he was quite young.

Ursula narrowed her eyes, feeling stupid. The boy had been holding the book in his sleep to keep a spell activated that would wake him. She should have known it from the start, but underestimated him because of his age.

"I knew you would come," he said. "Where else would you go, but toward the magic?"

"You all denied me my honour," she told him, wrenching her wrist away.

"And we gave you your life."

"I would prefer honour."

"You may as well forget it. You won't get any spell books from me."

She stared at him, gritting her teeth, wondering what to do. If she went for his throat he could use the book on her. She was so ashamed to have been caught that she wished the ground would crack open and consume her. A valkyrie of her stature, outwitted by a mere apprentice!

"I won't tell Lords Eliwood and Hector," he said. "We can just forget this happened."

She left his tent choking back a growl of rage. Pity was not anything she needed.

xxx

By the time she reached her own tent she found Jaffar by the dark fire pit, sitting still and staring into it as if there were still a fire in it. She stopped before him, clenching her hands into fists.

"You are a traitor," she told him softly.

He did not look up at her and not a single muscle twitched to hear her voice, despite her silent approach. He didn't respond, either.

"You left them—us. The people who raised you. The people who gave you everything."

Jaffar said nothing.

"You abandoned us for the _enemy_."

He raised his eyes to hers, then, but it was a long while before he finally said, in a voice hardly louder than a mumble, "No. For Nino."

"You should have killed her. That was your duty. Don't tell me that after all this time, the Angel of Death felt pity."

"Not pity."

"Then what could it be?"

A pause. "I don't know. Not yet."

Her gut sank with disgust. The girl had been the only one who had really cared for him, and foolishly, for Jaffar didn't understand care and couldn't return it. Could it be that her naïveté had touched him? It seemed that he wasn't nearly as "perfect" as they'd thought.

"These people will turn on you," she assured him. "They don't care about the lowly like us; they only care about advancing this war. They will use you."

"Like the Black Fang used me." His red eyes almost burned into hers.

She refused to flinch. "If they don't, they will turn you away. They'll see you for a monster—or worse, for the deserter you are."

She turned and went to her tent, leaving him with that thought.

xxx

Ursula woke before dawn and decided to prowl the foggy perimeters of the camp, hoping to gain any extra information on the people she was travelling with. She'd only gotten halfway around before a voice barked, "You!" and a figure in red armour came striding toward her through the fog.

It took her a moment to realize that this person was a woman, what with her cropped blonde hair and the scar across her face.

"Do I know you?" Ursula asked, and her hand went to her side before she realized she'd have no book or weapon there.

"No, but I know you! I recognize your description, at least. The tactician told me a woman just like you—a _valkyrie_—gave her a hammerne staff, so that this ragtag army could defeat me!"

So she had. Ursula felt herself smile coolly. "Then whatever are you doing with 'this ragtag army?'"

"Never mind that! You tried to undermine me! Where is your honour?"

That struck a chord. "It was denied to me. Your purpose was unjust. It was my duty to help however I could."

"Help them? Look at you. You begged them to kill you. You _hate_ them. _Us_."

For the first time since she could remember, Ursula was confused. She had indeed indirectly helped these lords before, the same ones she had been ordered to kill. How had that happened?

"What is your name?" she asked, as if to a subordinate.

"Vaida," the other woman spat, "and I don't forget my enemies. If I find you alone again, I will kill you!"

She brushed past and was gone, swallowed up by the fog. Ursula rolled her eyes and finished her walk.

* * *

**_The second and final part will be up soon._**


	2. Chapter 2

_B_

When Ursula returned to the fire pit she found Nino sitting there alone. Her fingers twitched, but she couldn't just leap for the girl. The sun was practically up, she never knew who would be out and about soon, and she was sure that Jaffar was watching even if she couldn't see him.

Or so she told herself. She approached the girl's back, not trying to be particularly silent, but when one of her footfalls crunched a clod of dirt Nino whirled around and flinched as if she were about to be shot at.

"Oh," she said softly after a long moment, lowering her arms from where they'd been shielding her head, "it's you."

Another moment passed between them, thick and awkward. Ursula took in her frizzing hair, her blotchy face, the red veins spiderwebbing her eyes. Pathetic or no, the girl had just been betrayed by the person she loved the most, and it surely hadn't been easy even on her feeble mind. Sonia must have had a good reason, a _perfect_ reason, but…wouldn't it have been fair to tell Nino first? To sic Jaffar on her seemed backhanded. Ignoble.

"How are you?" Ursula had to ask, if coldly.

"I…I'm okay."

"I am sorry for last night. You may have deserved it, but you should have been forewarned."

Nino just stared at her.

"You must trust that Sonia always has her reasons."

"I don't know if I can," said the girl. "Not anymore."

Then she was not as foolish as Ursula thought…but worse, much worse, made her wonder if _her_ faith in Sonia could not possibly be endangering her. She left quickly, before the conversation could take a turn for the worse.

xxx

The army had barely finished breakfast before some scout came back, a young cavalier with a mop of teal hair, yelling about a bandit ambush. Ursula had to hand it to them, as she opened a flap of her tent and peeked out: everyone was armed and ready in a few moments, and picking their way into the trees after the scout in small but tight formations.

"Ursula," said a voice, and a pair of boots came into view. She scowled and left the tent, straightening until she met Lord Eliwood's eyes—she was just taller than he was. Erk stood behind him, guardedly clutching a fire tome.

"We want you out there healing," Eliwood said. "Erk will accompany you."

_To stop me from pulling a weapon from a bandit and smashing it through your face_, Ursula read as the subtext. The thought made her smile. Eliwood ignored it and brushed past, and she was left to hurry with Erk behind the rest of the army.

At first she wasn't sure what good the boy would do—he'd fooled her once, sure, but she could get away from him easily enough—until the first bandit charged them, and the inferno he pulled from his simple _Fire_ tome was so large and bright that it turned the man to dust before he had time to scream.

She gave him a long look, finally piecing Eliwood's decision together. "You're a prodigy."

"So Lady Louise tells me," said the boy, snapping his tome shut. He considered it a moment in his hand before he glanced at her face. "I am sorry I had to destroy your _Excalibur_. Lord Hector didn't understand how precious it was."

"It was wise of him to keep it from me."

"I wish he'd allowed me a little time with it. I have most of what I saw memorized, since I burned it page by page, but not solidly enough to cast anything. A second read-through would have been helpful."

Ursula blinked and decided not to be too sore about his trick from the night before. "You said Lady Louise…wife of Lord Pent? The mage-general?"

"As I said last night, I'm his apprentice." He turned away from her to barbeque another bandit in the distance, this one trying to creep up on a tiny figure that appeared to be Nino. Jaffar was nowhere in sight. Nino started at the rush of flame, looked toward them, and waved her thanks.

"He must be proud," said Ursula.

"There's nothing to be proud of," said Erk. "I am not as good as he is, and somewhere out there must surely be a different prodigy, likely far better than me. Those are simply statistics." They both watched as Nino drew glyphs in the air, forking the lightning she cast to hit an enemy before her in three spots at once. He staggered to his knees. "Perhaps it will even be Nino."

_I doubt it,_ thought Ursula, but the more she watched the girl handle herself on the battlefield, the more impressed she had to be, despite herself.

"Keep studying," she said, feeling that it was all there was to say. Against her will, he was already starting to remind him of herself.

"That's funny," said Erk. "Usually people are trying to get me to _stop_."

She felt herself smile.

xxx

That night, at camp, she sought out Jaffar, needing answers. He was nowhere to be seen while the rest of the army was setting up tents and eating, but as soon as the campfire was put out she came across him sitting by it.

"I need to know why," she said, standing across the firepit from him. He ignored her. She stalked to his side and he finally glanced at her, but still said nothing, so she demanded it again: "Tell me _why_. Why you left."

"I told you. Nino."

"Your loyalty just disappeared into thin air! What happened? _How? _You can't even think for yourself; you're an _instrument_!"

His red eyes flicked up to hers, blank as always, but she shivered a little nonetheless. "I am a man."

"Men feel loyalty. It doesn't just magically disappear overnight."

"Maybe it was never there." He said nothing else but she knew how he'd end the sentence: maybe he'd never left earlier simply because he'd never realized there was anything to leave for. Disgusted, she left him.

xxx

She was walking back to her tent when she came across a figure on the outskirts of the camp, sitting on a stone and staring into space. She attempted to walk by without disturbing them, but just as she'd passed a voice cried,

"You!"

She turned to see the figure was Vaida, and now she was standing.

"Witch, I told you I would kill you!"

The woman was faster than she looked, and Ursula dodged her attack just in time, a bare-knuckled punch. Her instinct was to keep spinning with the dodge, to turn it into a quick spell, but she had nothing, nothing but the damn staff they'd given her. She used it to crack Vaida on the collarbone as she charged again, but she barrelled through as if she couldn't feel the blow and brought Ursula to the ground.

"Get off!" she demanded as they grappled—pretty evenly, as she was stronger than she looked, and was sure Vaida hadn't counted on that.

"It's safer if you die. You betrayed me and I _know_ you're going to do the same to Lords Eliwood and Hector as soon as you get the chance."

"You don't _know_ anything!"

"Don't you lie to me! I'm not an idiot!" She pounded down Ursula's head.

"This isn't betrayal-you know what that's like! Why haven't you gone back to Bern? _You can't_. You _deserted_."

She expected another slam of her skull against the ground, harder this time, but none came. Vaida growled and released her, rolling away with a muttered swear.

"My loyalty is intact," the wyvern rider spat after a moment. "What I do, I do for Prince Zephiel, even if it means betraying my order. For the time being."

_And what I do, I do for the Black Fang and for Sonia_, she thought back. _That's why I haven't slain anyone yet. I need the right chance._ Still, she had to admit, it would be a shame to erase the beautiful memory of young Erk, or to put an end to Nino before she was worth anything even to herself, or to take Jaffar's life just as he began it anew.

Vaida broke her out of her thoughts with an insult: "You're not fighting for anything greater. You've been brainwashed by the Fang and now you're just a captive of ours."

"I'm fighting to keep you all from _destroying_ what I'm fighting for. The Reeds are good men; Sonia and Limstella good leaders. The Black Fang is going to erase corruption from this country."

"You're a fool."

"You're the one fighting for a child, miles away, who will surely be turned to some evil before you can return to him."

Vaida reached out a hand, as if to grab Ursula by the collar, but seemed to think the better of it and drew it back. "I tire of this conversation." She stood and left, as calmly as if they'd never fought, and Ursula got to her feet with a deep frown.

Technically they were both deserters, and technically both loyal. If that was the case…what did loyalty actually mean?

* * *

_C_

She had almost made it to her tent when she saw Nino emerge from _hers_, bursting out into the night crying "Jaffar?" and almost running right into Ursula.

"He was by the fire," she said, "when I saw him last."

The girl seemed embarrassed. "I'm so sorry. Th-thank you."

"Don't stutter."

"Ah, I'm sorry," she said, almost stumbling over the words again, sounding more flustered than before.

"You're a mage, you know. A good one. You should have some pride."

She froze a little, then, and looked up into Ursula's face. "A good one?"

"Erk and I saw you on the battlefield," Ursula retorted. As far as she knew Nino barely even knew how to read, and yet she was drawing magic from the pages anyway, as if she simply knew what to do. She started to wonder why Sonia had always insisted that the girl was talentless; with some proper training she could be a fine mage someday. "You're stronger than you look."

"Oh, no," she said. "I just…I want to help. My whole life, all I've done is be useless. I won't be this time."

"You're not useless, Nino." She wasn't sure what made her say the words—an odd spark of affection for the girl—and she regretted saying them immediately, since Nino froze again and didn't reply. Perhaps no one had ever said anything like that to her, before. Regardless, Ursula was going to sleep. She brushed past her to finally get to her tent, and stopped when a small voice asked,

"Ursula?"

"Yes?" she said, turning, but Nino only shook her head, fists clenched tight in her skirt.

"Never mind. I'm sorry."

She raised an eyebrow but turned away again.

xxx

The next morning, before the sun rose she awoke to a horrific _crack_ that had her sitting bolt-upright, instinctively understanding the sound of a body hitting the ground. A _huge_ body. She crawled out of her tent and into the cold, foggy grey dawn, staff in hand, to see that one of the army's wyverns had crash-landed hardly a stone's throw away. Vaida was struggling out from beneath it, shouting, bleeding, and the wyvern roared and swiped its tail, the tip of one wing dangling sickeningly like a broken branch holding on by a strand of fibre.

Ursula understood that if she didn't do something, the mount would surely kill its rider. She ran for Vaida, ignoring others poking their heads outside the tent to see the commotion, and dodged another heavy swing of the tail. Her first thought was to grab the rider under her arms and help pull her out, but Vaida said through clenched teeth, "No, dammit, my _leg!_"

It was broken, horrifically, bone jutting out through the skin. Ursula ducked low to avoid the wyvern's beating wings and began to use her staff, trusting that it would mend the beast's wingtip even though its glow above her head was creating a glare she couldn't see through. Eventually it calmed, although she doubted she'd fully healed the damage, and she turned to Vaida instead, keeping a hand on her shoulder and slowly, slowly feeling her breaths ease, watching her bones re-fuse and her skin knit. When she was done and the blonde soldier was able to crawl away, she stared up at her in shock.

"You…you might have just saved my life."

"It would have spoiled my breakfast to watch you die," Ursula retorted nonchalantly.

"This means I can't kill you!" Vaida snarled as she got to her feet, sounding genuinely disappointed.

"It also means you can live another day to fight for your little prince." A silence settled between them before Ursula asked, "What happened?"

"A damned owl," she answered with a scowl. "We were landing, and it shot out of a tree—rabid or something, I don't know—and clipped Umbriel's wing. At the speed we were going, it just snapped, and we fell."

"Your wound was terrible. You bore it bravely."

"I was kind of more worried for Umbriel." There was another silence. Finally, very quietly, Vaida said, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," said Ursula.

"I won't."

xxx

She was surprised at breakfast when Erk sat down beside her. The boy seemed too quiet in nature to actually start a conversation, but the idea of someone voluntarily being close to her was more touching than it should have been. For a moment she felt like one of them, and then instantly hated herself for it.

"It was foggy this morning," she said, to distract herself. "If you hadn't destroyed my _Excalibur_ I could have blown it away from camp."

"It wasn't my idea," said Erk, and then, "It is a wind-based magic, is it not?"

"Yes."

"That is my newest fascination. It leads me to believe that our knowledge is incomplete."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, we know so much of fire and lightning. But wind—_Excalibur_—is so rare. And why don't we have spellbooks that deal with water, or soil? Anima magic _is_ derived from nature, is it not?"

Ursula could only blink. She had never thought of it, before. "I suppose so. Maybe it existed before the Scouring. A lot of knowledge was lost, then."

"Is it possible to use magic on _time_? If, perhaps, we could bend it and use it to travel—"

"Don't even start, boy," she said, chuckling despite herself.

xxx

The day was spent marching. Ursula watched the lords, Nino, and Jaffar, waiting still for her opportunity to strike, but it never came. What she saw instead was Lord Eliwood teaching Lady Lyndis court manners at her request, Lord Hector being surprisingly patient with a pink-haired cleric she'd seen pestering Erk, and Jaffar…the way he looked at Nino made her suddenly understand.

That night, as they made camp, she found him alone and accused, "You love her."

For the first time, emotion registered: shock, flashing for an instant and being replaced with his normal stoic expression immediately. "She is my…only friend. My best friend."

"That's why you couldn't kill her."

"I owed her my life."

"You abandoned everything for her."

"…When you put it like that…I…"

She could tell he wasn't sure of what to say. She also knew she should be indignant with him anew, and possibly with Nergal too, for he _did_ have emotions, which meant the Fang had been lied to all along. And yet, her instinct told her this was good. A human being was not meant to be blank.

"Jaffar, I think this might be…beneficial, for her." It was tough to say but she got it out. He merely stared up at her. "I think it might be beneficial for you, too."

He did not answer. She was sure that at this point he really had no idea what was best, for him or for anyone else. He had the same right as any man to figure it out on his own, however. She nodded a little to him and left, deciding it was high time she had a moment alone to think. Heading outside of camp, toward a copse of trees that looked like they could offer her privacy, she was aware of his eyes still watching her, suspecting that she might make a run for it, and she raised a hand—in farewell, but also to acknowledge that he was watching, and to assure him she wouldn't try anything foolish.

* * *

_Epilogue_

Fog had started to settle again. When she felt isolated enough she leaned against a tree and rubbed her ankle, still aching from the day of her capture. She had failed, really and truly failed. Jaffar, Nino, and all the lords were still alive. She had no weapons and no way to return to the Fang, and worst of all, she wasn't entirely sure that she _wanted_ to return. What, exactly, was this army doing that was so evil? What was so cruel about the lords that lead it? Nothing, that she could see.

She had always associated disloyalty with villainy, the worst possible trait a person could have. Yet she didn't find Vaida a villain. She didn't find Jaffar a villain. She didn't find _herself_ one, either.

A sudden flash of gold light clapped through the air and a figure stood in the middle of the copse when Ursula blinked the spots out of her eyes. Milk-white skin, long hair—

"Limstella?" she gasped.

The morph smiled. "We have finally found you. Do you think we will really allow you to join this band? To aid them? Your quintessence is ours and ours alone."

_I haven't,_ Ursula wanted to say, _I didn't,_ but she choked on the words. Limstella raised a hand toward her and she felt a wave of nausea sweep through her, like her stomach was trying to heave itself and her lungs up into her throat. Golden light poured out of her mouth, her vision faded, her ears buzzed.

In the end, her adventure ended the same way it began: Jaffar's knife at the edge of her face. It whizzed past, hurtling end-over-end through the air, and she witnessed Limstella disappear right before it could strike. It hit a tree instead. Ursula hit the ground, blind, tingling, feeling like

* * *

**Experimental ending is experimental. Ursula just can't win, though-if you don't kill her, Limstella will. Thank you Kitten Kisses for letting me steal the owl-hits-a-flying-thing idea, and thanks everyone else for your patience regarding this update.**


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